Mouse infested restaurant boss gets suspended jail sentence

The old General Wolfe pub.

THE boss of restaurant closed down after city health officials found it infested with mice and droppings on the food has been given a suspended prison sentence.

Israr Raja had pleaded guilty to 18 breaches of food hygiene regulations at the Bab E Khybar restaurant and takeaway in Foleshill Road.

And at Warwick Crown Court the 25-year-old of Dorset Road, Radford was sentenced to six months in prison suspended for 18 months.

Raja, who ran the restaurant in the former General Wolfe pub with 46-year-old Akbar Jan, was also ordered to do 180 hours of unpaid work and to pay £1,000 costs.

The Observer reported back in July how council environmental health officers found the restaurant in a filthy condition with grime and grease on the surfaces, rat droppings on the stored food and dead flies everywhere.

Food itself was being stored unhygienically, with food which needed to be chilled being kept at too warm a temperature, and there was no food safety management system in place.

The court also heard Jan, the senior partner who is listed as a director of the restaurant, had four previous prosecutions for food hygiene offences in Birmingham and had been banned from being involved in running any food business.

Jan, whose address on a website of company directors is given as the same Foleshill Road address as the restaurant, has since disappeared.

Judge Richard Griffith-Jones told Raja: "Disgraceful, repellent, disgusting; all appropriate adjectives for this terrible business you embarked upon.

"If I thought you were the orchestrator, I would have no hesitation in saying a custodial sentence was appropriate. But you were not, and you are a young man who has not been in trouble before."

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